Turkey

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen named former Turkish presidential advisor Huseyin Dirioz as the organisation’s deputy secretary-general in charge of defence and planning on Friday (July 16th). The move came following a promise Rasmussen made when he took the post in 2009 to appoint a Turkish citizen as his deputy.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul will travel to Slovenia on a formal visit on Wednesday. President’s Press Office released a statement and said Gul’s visit takes place in July 14-15, upon an invitation of Slovenian President Danilo Turk.

One of Bulgaria’s right-wing nationalist parties, VMRO, said that it would ask Parliament to debate whether the country should hold a referendum on Turkey’s accession to the European Union, after the party claimed to have gathered 300 000 signatures from Bulgarian citizens calling for a referendum.

Turkey’s Cabinet ministers and senior representatives of the EU met Tuesday in Istanbul. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis led the Turkish delegation. The EU has been represented by

Bulgaria’s foreign minister Nikolay Mladenov has played down concerns that Bulgaria would oppose a future membership in the EU on the part of Turkey. Mladenov said that Bulgaria “supports the processes of EU-accession of Turkey”, speaking for the Anatolian News Agency in Dubrovnik, where leaders from the Balkans gathered to …

The government has decided to abolish entrance visa requirements for Turkish citizens, effective Monday, the day Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan kicks off a visit. He will meet with President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic. The programme also includes a visit to the Muslim-dominated town of Novi …

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Wednesday (July 7th) criticised the EU’s “unfair” attitude towards Turkey. In an interview with the Danish daily Politiken, Rasmussen urged the EU “to take a series of pragmatic steps to improve relations with Turkey, entirely outside the [EU accession] negotiations” process. Rasmussen, Denmark’s former …

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday urged Turkey to make a step forward in its ties with Armenia and open the common border between the two countries. “We urge both sides continue to try to find the opportunities

Bulgaria should receive its first natural gas supplies from Azerbaijan in 2011, agreed the presidents of the two countries, Georgi Parvanov and Ilham Aliyev. Parvanov went to Azerbaijan’s capital Baku Wednesday on a two-day state visit focused precisely on gas supplies talks and energy security. He is returning a visit

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu on Monday (June 28th) to “grasp the current political window of opportunity to reach a settlement” in long-standing efforts